Archive for ‘January, 2011’

Some corallary of Murphy’s Law

Friday, late afternoon, I could type 2-4 characters….in any program… and then “not responding” appeared in the window header. I finally shut things down and went to bed. I woke Saturday and laid in bed wondering if I should try to turn the computer on or not. Based on Friday’s behavior and the prognosis from the laptop doctor, the hard drive was on its way out. IF, the computer would still boot and the hard drive was readable, although crippled, there was a good chance of getting a clone…thereby insuring that all could be moved to a new drive. I have my data. The issue is all of the software and in particular my working environment. Re-installing all is a 1 – 2 day event of mostly waiting for things to happen, doing a bit, waiting….

So, back to laying in bed and thinking. Should I turn the thing on or leave it off and hope there was enough life left for a clone. And if so, that meant an entire weekend without computer or internet. Somewhat inconceivable to me! My recipes, news, what if I needed to google something????

The plan: A trip to Costco to see if there was a computer that was reasonable…that could do in a pinch for working and/or for my computer withdrawal symptoms…

I went. And a bonus was that it was sunny! (those are the ski runs of Big Mountain, Whitefish)

And I found a computer. It is still in the box. I have 90 days to return it or take it out of the box. We wait.

But…I DID turn my computer on. And it is working, mostly ok. However, it has its moments, so we will be keeping its doctor appointment Monday morning.

Meanwhile, today, Sunday, it has been sunny off and on, but late this morning, on a run to Somers for a walk and a quick grocery run…

…light on the water…

…sun rays through a break in the clouds.

Time to relax…because sometimes….when preparation is made for the worst, it doesn’t happen – some corallary of Murphy’s Law.

What’s up? … a public service announcement!

If you’re Bob, what’s up is a bird.

Here at “we work at home”, what’s up is computer problems. Probably problem.

Suddenly, yesterday, everything slowed to a crawl. Cutting to the chase, the most likely suspect for a sudden slowdown is a hard drive problem.

All here is backed up and we limp along until first thing Monday morning when the laptop has an appointment with the local laptop doctor.

Meanwhile, all computer time, slow as it is, will be devoted to getting as much billable work done as possible seeing as how the tool for billable work will be unavailable for the better part of Monday…at least.

The public service announcement(s):
BACK UP YOUR COMPUTER – on a schedule!!! As in back up anything that would make you cry if you lost it forever. External hard drives are cheap – get one if you don’t have one. Actually get 2 and keep important stuff on them and keep 1 somewhere the other one isn’t….in case your house burns down, floats away, goes to Kansas in a tornado or some other catastrophic thing. And don’t think I don’t do what I say. One of my externals is in the motorhome, one is in the house. My work is backed up to a client server in California. Other items are on a server in Michigan.

The (s) is for me. I have always in the past kept my second oldest computer as a backup. This year, extenuating circumstances and all, I’ve been working with just 1 computer and no backup…

Back to our regularly scheduled programming…..sometime…next week probably. I’ll take photos. So far, nothing wrong with the camera…

Chickpea Frittata with tomatoes, goat cheese and olives

I can’t remember how I happened on this recipe, but I found not only the chickpea frittata that was my breakfast this morning, but also recipes for chickpea flatbread – a soft flatbread.

By different names, these are sold fresh off or out of cast iron in at least Italy and France. There is a bit of variation in seasoning and how they are served and what they are called.

I am not found of the bean flours in gluten free baking mixes – they seem to impart an odd flavor to baked goods. But I love all kinds of beans, chickpea in particular so when I saw this recipe with only chickpea flour, I was gung-ho to try it. Since this is savory, a bean taste would be ok…but it did not taste “beany” to me.

Just out of the oven.

No egg or dairy in the recipe: chickpea flour, olive oil, salt, seasonings and water. But it bakes up with a custard-like consistency. I added cumin, black pepper and a bit of italian seasoning to my mix….

And topped with fresh tomatoes, goat cheese and kalamata olives. I liked!

The link to the recipe I started with: My Recession Kitchen’s Tuscan Chickpea Frittata

Kalyn’s Kitchen recipe for Socca has more info as well as a flatbread variation…my next try.

A sunshiny day

Moonshadows, moonset and sunrise…not a cloud in the sky…

Cold, but clear making a nice change from the gray, drippy days of the past week – a sunshiny day.